Synopsis: I was a Merchant
Officer prior to WWII. I entered the Coast Guard as a Reserve Ensign and
after a brief indoctrination school I was assigned to the CGC Ilex
out of Portland, Maine. After a brief career I was ordered to the CGC Tupelo
which was just being delivered from the builders yard. After an
adventurous ride from Duluth to Norfolk, stopping on the way to do
necessary work, we arrived in Norfolk where we remained until 1943. Tupelo
was ordered to the South Pacific and after encountering further
adventures we arrived and began our new duties. We'll pick up our story at
this point.

Soon we were on our way to the
far Pacific, our destination Guam, which was still in Japanese hands. We
were traveling alone except for a group of landing craft called LCIs.
Being senior in rank to the skippers of the LCls, we were in charge, and
thus responsible for the safety of our little convoy. We were too slow to
join a regular Navy group.

We reached Kwajalein Atoll
without event except for exchanging movies among the ships. Kwajalein was
a staging area for the next invasion: Tinian, Saipan, and Guam. The atoll
was filled with ships of all sizes and types. After a week here, we joined
a slow Navy convoy and headed for Guam, arriving just as the cruisers and
destroyers were shelling the harbor. Although the harbor had not yet been
secured; we were ordered to go in, launch a ship's motorboat and send a
sounding party in to find, and mark with small buoys, a channel leading to
the beach for the first contingent of Marines to go ashore to fight. This
was our baptism under fire.

As Exec, I was in charge. We
had one seaman in the bow armed with a rifle with orders to look for
isolated [Japanese]. The rest of us were heaving lead lines and using
sounding poles as we steered here and there to find water deep enough for
the landing craft. Meanwhile the off-shore ships were firing over our
heads to soften up the shore. We were quite happy and relieved to see the
landing boats filled with Marines come speeding past us, heading for the
beach and battle. Our job was finished so we "got the hell out of
there quick."

The next day the [Japanese]
had been driven back enough to make the harbor secure and we brought the
ship in to anchor. Little did we know that this was to be our home base
for the next year or more. It was very hot and the crew had been sleeping
out on deck. I slung my hammock in between the depth charge racks on the
stem, hanging my pistol on one side and my knife on the other. I was tired
and slept soundly, not knowing that the ship had received a message
earlier, warning about the possibility of [Japanese] swimmers coming out
to plant limpet mines on our hull. Imagine how I felt when I awoke and
found that a seaman had carelessly left a Jacob's ladder hanging right
over the stem where I had slept!

Our next job was to report to
Navy Service Squadron Four for duty. They were known as "Harbor
Stretchers". Their job was to go into an unimproved area and create a
harbor that could be used by large combat and supply ships. The Squadron
consisted of auxiliary ships and a battalion of Seabees. Our task with
them was to plant buoys to mark channels for safe navigation, and a much
bigger job, to locate and plant the large heavy mooring buoys needed for
the major ships. We used what were called "Battleship Moorings"
which consisted of a cylindrical buoy 10 feet in diameter, weighing five
tons, connected to a 10-ton clump of concrete as a central anchor by a
straight down massive riser chain, cut to the exact depth of water. Each
link of this 2-1/2" diameter chain weighed 20 lbs. On the top of the
buoy there was a large link for the ship's mooring wire. Down at the
bottom where the chain attached to the cement clump was a massive iron
ring to which are attached three leg chains that lead out flat along the
sea bottom several hundred feet to a massive battleship anchor weighing 15
tons.

All of the above describes
only one mooring buoy capable of holding the largest ship. Over the next
year we set many of these. Each buoy was a five day job in itself to
assemble and plant. The material had been sent out from the states in a
cargo ship dedicated to this purpose, filled with buoys, chain and
anchors. The ship would come into the harbor and tugs would put it
alongside a shallow reef on which the equipment could be dumped by the
ship's cargo booms.

We had a flat barge made up of
a few sections of temporary floating docks that the big LSTs brought out,
slung alongside these 350' vessels and cut loose when required. We built
an A-frame hoist on one end of the barge, and mounted a gasoline engine
winch to haul the material aboard from the shallow waters. We had two
extra-large outboard propelling engines affixed to the stem of the barge,
and now we had a self-propelled barge with hoist and hauling capability.
Assigned one officer and an eight man crew, the barge made trips all day
long to bring the massive material out to our ship for assembly.

Our Coast Guard Buoy Tender, Tupelo,
was 180 feet long, and had a large open deck from the focs'le back almost
to amidships, with open ports in the bulwarks on each side. It had a
massive 30-ton boom (derrick) with three separate hoisting tackles.

Here is how we prepared a
mooring: The barge was brought alongside, the boom was swung out and a
hook was lowered with chain or wire slings to lift the material aboard
from the barge. The mooring buoy was then set off to one side, and the
three anchors were also brought aboard and set aside. Then the chain was
hauled aboard in sections and stretched out on deck. Each length of chain
was 90 feet (15 fathoms). Since we had to use three sections of chain for
each of the three legs, they had to be connected with heavy links, put
together with rivets. So we had to have a forge going somewhere on deck to
heat the rivets. Now it was impossible to have all this chain on deck at
one time, so we assembled just one leg at a time, and then draped the
chain over the side in the open buoy port, secured by rope lashings to a
smaller chain stretched fore and aft between pad eyes on deck.

The buoy ports could only
accommodate one chain leg at a time, so we had to have another ship, a
Navy Net Tender, laying alongside. These ships were 150 feet long and had
two massive horns stretching forward on their bow. On deck they had two
large winches with wire cables leading forward over the horns. We stopped
off bights of the third mooring leg chain between the horns so their
winches could lower the rig to the sea bottom. With heavy material such as
this, everything had to be slowly lowered. Nothing could be permitted to
run free. Then we would make up the riser chain connecting the ring and
the ends of the three legs and bend all of it on to the big cement clump.
At that point we were ready to set the mooring.

These moorings had to be set
in exact positions so on the big day the two ships, tied together, got
underway and went to the approximate position. Maneuvering the ships in
accordance with pre-determined sextant angles of distant objects ashore,
we would hoist out the central clump on the riser chain using two of our
boom hoisting tackles, and gently lower it down hand-over-hand to the
bottom. As it was lowered each lashed section of leg chain had to be cut
loose so that the leg chains would go down together with the riser chain.
This required closely supervised coordination in order to do it safely.

When the central clump was on
the bottom the Navy ship backed away in the prescribed direction slowly
stretching out the first leg of chain. She then lowered the anchor
tripping it clear by using a special remote release link. Next, she came
in perpendicular to our buoy deck at a new 120 degree angle, and we hung
the second anchor on her horns. As she backed away, we cut the successive
lashings on the sections of leg chain. Once again she lowered and
stretched out the leg and anchor.

Now the same procedure was
done once more on the other side of our ship, and the job was complete. It
took an entire day to set the buoy after all the assembling had been
accomplished. Meanwhile, our barge had been busy loading up with the next
mooring. No rest for the weary. You can see why we needed a hundred men in
our crew.

When we first got our orders
for this job there was no one around to tell us how to do it. The Navy
gave me a set of blueprints and said "Here, study these. Go get your
stuff over on the reef and figure it out for yourselves." Thank
goodness I had a good Chief Bos'ns Mate and other petty officers with
prior buoy tender experience who were able to execute my ideas. I kept a
workbook of all this and when I left the ship they were working on Buoy
No. 33. Of course there were periods when we did a lot of other things as
well.

There was the time that the
Navy sent out a stripped-down Spanish-American War battleship, the
Oregon, loaded with 1,500 tons of dynamite. The ship had been gutted
out and was only just a barge now. She was eventually intended to be sunk
to help make the new breakwater that was to enclose Apra Harbor at Guam.

We were ordered to intercept a
Navy tug a hundred miles at sea and take over her tow, and bring it to a
special mooring near a native village at the south end of Guam. We had
already planted a mooring buoy and were also going to use Oregon's anchor,
which once dropped, could not be raised again since there was no anchor
windlass.

A Navy Admiral decided that he
wanted to watch the operation so he came out and rode on TUPELO. As we
approached the channel that the Seabees had blown up in the reef so we
could get the OREGON in, I went aboard her to supervise the securing to
the mooring buoy and the stretching out to where the anchor had to be
dropped. The anchor chain was secured by a pelican hook to a ring on deck
and was dropped by striking the tongue of the pelican hook with a sledge
hammer. Everything had to be precise; so I felt that I was best qualified
to decide when to drop the anchor. Came the time, I swung and missed! I
tried a second time with a mighty swing and missed again! Just then, the
voice of the Admiral boomed out over the speakers "Tell that officer
to let a Bo's'n's mate do it." Rest assured that when the Admiral sat
down for lunch in the wardroom, I was conspicuously absent. I grabbed my
sandwich in the pantry and disappeared.

There was another time when
the Navy was getting ready to invade the Philippines and needed a supply
of dynamite for the Seabees to blow up beach obstructions at Palau Island.
We took 250 tons of the 40% gelatin boxes aboard completely filling the
main hold and the entire buoy deck stacked to the height of the bulwarks.
Joining a slow convoy we headed West. This was one time in a convoy that
we did not have to worry about collision with other ships since no one
would come near us. It was on this trip that I drew my pistol and for the
first time pointed it at another human being.

We had arrived in the atoll
late in the afternoon. The water was too deep to anchor and a merchant
ship was tied up to the only mooring buoy. I brought Tupelo
alongside the ship and asked the Mate on deck for permission to tie up
alongside. He said we could not. It was after working hours and the union
seamen would not take our lines. I told the Mate to get the union
representative. A swarthy, mean-looking individual swaggered out and said,
"This is a hungry ship and they won't pay any overtime." I
explained how the Navy needed our cargo to save the lives of the Marines
when they invaded the beach. This did not impress the man, who
incidentally was being paid 150% wages for being in a war zone, in the
least. Our bridge wing was just at the level of the ship's main deck so we
were talking face to face. I drew my pistol, pointed it at him and told
him I considered him a worse enemy than the nearest [Japanese], and that
he had exactly 30 seconds to call his men out. He saw me pull the hammer
back, cocking the gun. Of course he didn't know the gun was empty. There
was instant cooperation and we got our cargo unloaded and left to go back
to Guam.

By now I had been in the
Pacific for what seemed a very long time. I had been promoted to Full
Lieutenant and felt that I had served as XO here long enough. Our Captain,
whom at first I loved like a father, was also feeling the strain, and was
getting unreasonable with the crew. I felt that the morale of the crew was
important to our job, and as a result I came into conflict with the
Captain on occasion.

Fortunately, a message came in
ordering me to return to Honolulu to take command of the Buoy Tender Walnut.
About this time I started having problems with hemorrhoids, so I spent
most of the nine-day trip on the transport sitting in hot baths. Arriving
in Hawaii, I quickly relieved the departing skipper of Walnut, and
then logged in at the Naval Hospital for surgery. The ship was in a repair
status so the Exec held things together until I got back a week later.

Walnut
was a former
Department of Commerce Lighthouse Service vessel, built in the early
thirties, was steam powered and had twin screws. A dream of a boat to
handle. We worked entirely in the Hawaiian Islands except for an
occasional supply trip to French Frigate Shoals.

We would often tie up at an
out-island wharf where the fruit to be shipped was piled up awaiting
transport. They piled the boxes high so one could not get at the fruit,
but they did not realize that we could hoist a man up in a Bos'n's chair
with our boom. All hands enjoyed a feast.

Life was rather routine
(especially after Guam.) I learned how to carve monkeypod wood candy
dishes. Earlier in the war, the Coast Guard, which had taken over the
Steamboat Inspection Service (which examined Merchant Marine seamen for
licenses) had, because of news reports of favoritism in examinations
(whether true or not), declared a moratorium on letting Coast Guard
personnel raise licenses for the duration. Now they had just opened it up.

I appeared at the door of the
examiner's office the very next day to apply to raise my Second Mate's
Ocean license. The chief yeoman tipped me off on how to keep on the good
side of the crusty old captain who examined the deck people: Be there
every morning before he gets there, and talk about his hobby of wood
carving.

I followed that advice, and
seven days of examination later, I had in my hand a License for Chief
Mate, Unlimited Tonnage, Oceans AND Master, Oceans of 1500 Gross Tons,
plus all the Pilotage that I had accumulated in prior years. It wasn't
until I got back after the war that I was able to remove the tonnage
limitation on Master.

When the war ended there was a
scramble of Reserves checking their points to see if they could yet go
home. I had an episode of a seaman threatening me. We had a third class
Bos'ns mate who was always losing his Bos'ns pipe. He was about to leave
for home when we inspected his sea bag, and there was the Bos'ns pipe. He
got bent all out of shape and later (after we all got home) wrote me a
"hate" letter in which he said, "You are hiding behind your
two silver bars (rank insignia), and more than one man has your
address." -- (ad infinitum, ad nauseam). I was not happy to read this
tirade, but I considered the source and promptly forgot about it. Never
again in my thirty year Coast Guard career did I ever experience another
such episode.

In the spring of 1946, when I
was out at French Frigate Shoals, I received a message ordering us back to
Honolulu. I was to take command of one of the newer buoy tenders, the Redbud,
and take her to the South Pacific Islands to re-supply the CG Loran
Stations scattered about.

We towed an LCM (a landing
craft capable of hauling a truck), so we could land supplies on open
beaches where there were no docks. This worked fine for a number of
landings. Most of the islands were populated with natives including
bare-breasted maidens. We had a British Consular Official with us since
some of these islands were British. One island had a radio operator with
whom I corresponded after the war and sent him "Care" packages.
He would send me carved objects d'art, some of which had inserts made from
a downed [Japanese] aircraft.

All went well until we arrived
at Johnson Island, a former Pan American seaplane base before the war, and
the island that Amelia Earhart was trying to find when she was lost in her
plane. In order to make a landing with the LCM, they had to have two
vehicles down on the beach with winches, to run wires to each side of the
bow of the landing craft. The boat would run for the beach at full speed,
men would quickly hook the tow wires and the vehicles would haul the LCM
firmly up on the beach out of the reach of the surf. Well, this time some
person failed to properly secure the wire rope clamps on one side, and
when they hauled away, one wire parted and the other pulled the LCM
broadside in the surf.

They got the supplies out but
now we had the problem of how to get the boat back off the beach. Normally
a bulldozer would push on the boat's bow and work it back down into the
water until the engines could be started to back the boat off. But now the
engine room was flooded out from the surf and the boat was filling with
sand. There was nothing that the bulldozer could do. These are the days
that a captain dreads. He just has to come up with an answer. Redbud,
a single screw electric drive ship, had been having main generator
problems and one main engine was down. This left the ship with only half
maneuvering power.

This was no time for a ship to
go fooling around close to shore with only half power. We had to get the
LCM off and launched our small motorboat to run a towing hawser ashore
while I brought the ship in just as close as I dared. We finally got the
hawser made fast. The people ashore had shoveled out most of the sand, so
we pulled the LCM off. I had my most experienced officer on the small boat
and had told him very positively NOT to allow anyone to jump aboard, but
only to just stick the suction hose from his portable pump down into the
engine room.

As could be expected, an eager
beaver jumped aboard and immediately the stem sank. Now we had a wet eager
beaver and a wreck halfway out to the ship, floating vertically in the
water supported by the side tanks on the bow. Pulling it alongside we
tried to raise the boat with the boom but it was impossible. We ended up
sinking this menace to navigation with rifles.

Fortunately, this was our last
scheduled stop, so we headed for home. When I went in to report to the
District Commander, I was surprised to see that he was the officer I had
failed to salute on my first day of duty in the Coast Guard. All he said
was, "Guess you had a rough time, Son!" Shortly after that Redbud
was assigned to the Navy for duty at The Atomic Test at Bikini. I was
called up to the District Office to see a bunch of Navy Officers waiting
to discuss the problems of establishing navigational aids at Bikini. They
put a complete Navy cargo ship at my disposal to carry all the materials
needed for marking the channels leading into Bikini Lagoon, and for
positioning the target ships. We also sneaked in a cargo of beer.

Arriving at Bikini, we went to
work for the Navy Hydrographic ship Sumner. It was fun working for
the Navy since they knew absolutely nothing about buoy work. They wanted a
buoy to be put in an exact position (within 15 geographic feet) for the
purpose of orienting the elaborate shore instrumentation. It was to be in
180 feet of water and they wanted to use a spar buoy (which looks like a
telegraph pole). They couldn't see that such a buoy could not watch within
the tolerance desired.

So once again as usual, the
Captain was expected to come up with a solution. We had a fat can buoy
under which we hung a large cargo ship-size snatch block which we bummed
from our personal cargo ship. Then we took a cement sinker with 200 feet
of wire rope instead of chain, rove it through the block, and attached an
iron ball normally used to ballast this type of buoy to keep it upright so
that it hung freely as a pendulum. Then with theodolite stations set up at
two locations ashore, we were guided by radio into maneuvering the ship
with the buoy hanging alongside for a couple of hours until we were
exactly on their desired station. Gently setting the sinker down we now
had a buoy watching straight up and down without regard to current or wind
drift. The Navy was happy.

On Easter Sunday I organized a
brass quartet, and we played two services, morning and afternoon, since
only half of the many ships' crews could be granted liberty at a time. By
now the Navy had ships all over the place at Bikini, including the test
target vessels.

We wrapped up our work at
Bikini by towing a fresh water barge to Kwajalien and back, and then were
ordered home about two weeks before the actual test. We did not get to see
the results of our Bikini duty.

Upon returning to Honolulu, I
was relieved and ordered back to the States for discharge, having
accumulated well over the number of points eligible for return to civilian
life.

Before leaving, a friendly
yeoman at the District Office surreptitiously told me that the Navy had
sent in a good report on me and that the Admiral had recommended me for a
permanent commission in the regular Coast Guard.

There was no State-side
transport available on ships, so I bummed a ride on a Navy former tuna
boat going to San Diego. Having to stand a watch under the command of an
"Ensign captain" was galling, but after four years of war, it
was worth it in order to be heading home.